The making of C.L.R. James. By Jason Schulman (Issue 195, July-August 2018). Review of The Young C.L.R. James: A Graphic Novelette. Illustrated by Milton Knight and edited by Paul Buhle and Lawrence Ware (PM Press, 2018, 43 p.): “This pamphlet is a delight … [it] mainly concentrates on the relatively little-known details of James’ early life.”

Anthony Bogues: C.L.R. James and his times (Issue 188, May-June 2017). Review of Every Cook Can Govern: The Life, Impact and the Works of C.L.R. James. A Worldwrite documentary “with rare photo montages as well as footage of James himself speaking. This footage and photographs are supplemented with extensive interviews with scholars.”

Paul Ortiz: C.L.R. James’ visionary legacy (Issue 156, January-February 2012)
“C.L.R. James was a product of the African Diaspora. He was the consummate revolutionary and, I believe, by far the most important Marxist for the 21st century.”

Grant Farred: C.L.R. James and Anti-/Postcolonialism (No.90, January/February 2001)
“This essay will focus on two modes of thinking and locales that are dialectically related: the presence and absence of anti-/postcolonialism in James’ work.”

Paul Le Blanc: The Marxism of C.L.R. James (No.60, January/February 1996)
“C.L.R. James offered penetrating analyses on the interrelationships of class, race and gender, and his discussions of colonialism and anti-colonialism could be brilliant. But he also embraced the heritage of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, the working-class and socialist movements of Europe and North America, and the Bolshevism of Lenin and Trotsky …”

The C.L.R. James Institute

C.L.R. James: A revolutionary vision for the 20th century. By Anna Grimshaw (April 1991, 44 p.)
“James’s distinctive contribution to the understanding of civilization emerged from a world filled with war, division, fear, suppression and unprecedented brutality … This theme, what James later called the struggle between socialism and barbarism, was the foundation of his life’s work.”

Dkrenton.co.uk

Dave Renton: C.L.R. James (2007)
“Cyril Lionel Robert James was the great intellectual of the African revolution. He was a friend and inspiration to Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere, the two leaders of the first generation of independence struggles.” About Dave Renton’s book: C.L.R. James: Cricket’s Philosopher King (Haus Books, 2007, 202 p.)

Insurgent Notes

Matthew Quest: C.L.R. James on Pan-Africanism (Issue 6, June 2012)
“A small and dangerous volume, this republication of C.L.R. James’s A History of Pan-African Revolt is a concise survey of Black freedom struggles in the United States, the Caribbean, and on the African continent from 1739–1969.”

CLR James and the Black Jacobins (Issue 126, Spring 2010, p.95-120)
“Christian Høgsbjerg discusses The Black Jacobins, CLR James’s path-breaking history of the great Haitian Revolution of the late 18th century.”

Christian Høgsbjerg: C L R James: the revolutionary as artist (Issue 112, Autumn 2006)
“I will give a necessarily condensed overview of his life, in particular focusing on his early political thought, before turning to the question of how Marxists today might try to build on the best elements of James’s rich and inspiring legacy.”

Paul Buhle: The neglected C.L.R. James (Vol.52, No.5, October 2000). Review of Martin Glaberman, Marxism for Our Times: C. L. R. James on Revolutionary Organization (Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 1999)
“Martin Glaberman, a longtime disciple who maintained several groups in Detroit around James’ ideas, gives us material that has practically never seen the light of day.”

Kent Worcester: Renegades and Castaways (Issue 57, Summer 2014). Review of three books by Christian Høgsbjerg.
“More than any other contemporary writer on James, Christian Høgsbjerg appreciates how provisional and incomplete our understanding of this intellectual agenda has actually been. Given the proliferation of fresh editions of James’s books and essays, and the availability of several biographies, it would seem as if this ground would have been thoroughly canvassed. But the gaps are enormous …”

New Society

David Widgery: A meeting with comrade James (June 26, 1980; online at Marxists Internet Archive)
“To the best of my ability, I have attempted not to hero-worship this man who, if Marxists believed in such things, would be the greatest living Marxist.”

Pandaemonium

Kenan Malik: Beyond a Boundry (May 19, 2013)
“This year marks the 50th anniversary of CLR James’ wonderful, groundbreaking work Beyond a Boundary. To call it a book about cricket is a bit like calling cricket a ‘game’. Beyond the Boundary blends politics and memoir, history and journalism, biography and reportage, in a manner that transcends literary, sporting and political boundaries.”

Kenan Malik: CLR James, Frantz Fanon and the meaning of liberation (April 16, 2012)
“Novelist and orator, philosopher and cricketer, historian and revolutionary, Trotskyist and Pan-Africanist – there are few modern figures who can match his intellectual depth, cultural breadth or sheer political contrariness.”

Permanent Revolution

Obituary: C L R James 1901-1989 (September 2007)
“James’ legacy is considerable. His cultural work alone makes him an important figure for the new generation … And in developing a Trotskyist proÂ­gramme for anti-imperialist revoÂ­lution and for black liberation, revolutionary Marxists have to analyse and criticise James’ work. He is a part of our heriÂ­tage – and one of our most formidable opponents.”

Revolutionary History

Anna Grimshaw: CLR James (1901-1989) (Vol.2, No.3, Autumn 1989)
“… we could label the five main periods of James’s life as follows: 1901-32 Trinidad, the making of a colonial intellectual; 1932-38 Britain, Trotskyist and Pan-Africanist; 1938-53 America, Marxist theoretician and Black activist; 1953-66 Africa and the Caribbean, the struggle for independence; 1967-89 International, teacher and mentor.”

CLR James and British Trotskyism (1986)
An interview given by CLR James to Al Richardson, Clarence Chrysostom and Anna Grimshaw on Sunday 8th June & 16th November 1986 in South London.

Searchlight South Africa

Communinalism and socialism in Africa: the misdirection of C.L.R. James. By Baruch Hirson (No.4, February 1990, p.64-73; online at Marxists Internet Archive)
“James straddled two political philosophies: that of nationalism in his African writings, and that of Marxism in his writings on Europe.”

Socialist Challenge

Tariq Ali and C.L.R. James: A conversation (3 July 1980; online at Marxists Internet Archive)
“He is presently in London for the publication of a number of his writings by Allison and Busby, including a revised edition of his classic The Black Jacobins. I met him last week in his hotel room. He stipulated one condition for the interview. It must end as the Second Test Match began, as he did not want to miss a single minute of cricket.”

SocialistWorker.org

Uncovering a C.L.R. James treasure trove. By Paul Buhle (March 19, 2018)
Review of C.L.R. James and Revolutionary Marxism: Selected Writings of C.L.R. James, 1939-49, edited by Scott McLemee and Paul Le Blanc (Haymarket Books, 2018, 238 p./Humanity Books, 1994). “This reprint of essays and documents restores to readers a valuable and interesting text that is both relevant today and a part of socialist history that is barely understood.”

The lessons of cricket. By Don Lash (April 16, 2014)
“In addition to its lessons about sports, C.L.R. James’ memoir about cricket explains a lot about the political development of the great revolutionary.”

On the stage of history (February 21, 2013)
“In his column for Inside Higher Ed, Scott McLemee reviews a recently rediscovered play written by the great historian and revolutionary C.L.R. James.”

Save the C.L.R. James library (September 23, 2010)
“Scott McLemee explains the legacy of writer and historian C.L.R. James – and why people are challenging the renaming of the C.L.R. James Library in London.”

Trotskyism
By Alex Callinicos (Open University Press, 1990)

Chapter 4.2: C.L.R. James and the virtues of spontaneity
“C.L.R. James is one of the most important counter-examples to the charge of Eurocentrism sometimes made against the Trotskyist movement … James was, however, in a class all his own.”

Urgent Tasks

Revolutionary Artist. By Stanley Weir (No.12, Summer 1981)
Personal memory and political history of C.L.R. James.

The Black Jacobins Reader. By Brian Richardson (Socialist Review, Issue 424, May 2017). Review of Charles Forsdick and Christian Høgsbjerg’s (eds) book (Duke University Press, 2017, 464 p.)
“This collection of essays emerged out of a conference held to mark the 70th anniversary of The Black Jacobins’s publication.”

CLR James the Black Jacobins. By Kenan Malik (Kenanmalik.com, 17 August 2010)
“‘The Black Jacobins’, the story of the Haitian Revolution and of its tragically flawed leader Toussaint L’Ouverture, is James’ masterpiece. An extraordinary synthesis of novelistic narrative and factual reconstruction.”

CLR James and the Black Jacobins (International Socialism, Issue 126, Spring 2010, p.95-120)
“Christian Høgsbjerg discusses ‘The Black Jacobins’, CLR James’s path-breaking history of the great Haitian Revolution of the late 18th century.”

The Black Jacobins 70 years later. By Manuel Yang (MR Zine, 03/02/08)
“This classic account of the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1803 is one of the greatest books in the twentieth century.”

Man’s unconquerable mind: CLR James and The Black Jacobins. By David Renton (Dkrenton.co.uk, 24 March 2007; online at Internet Archive WayBackMachine)
“The book has had a very wide audience, wherever similar struggle haves remained alive. The censors of apartheid South Africa would later ban The Black Jacobins.”

Toussaint L’Ouverture: The Gilded African (Socialist Review, February 2010)
“Locked in an Alpine castle, Toussaint L’Ouverture died in April 1803 having led the slave insurrection of Saint-Domingue and challenged French domination of the Caribbean.”

The tragedy of Toussaint L’Ouverture: Haiti’s Robespierre. By Björn Kumm (CounterPunch, January 19, 2010)
“C.L.R. James sadly concludes that Toussaint L’Ouverture, Haiti´s revolutionary leader, was in fact a Black Jacobin, a Caribbean Robespierre, radical but authoritarian, not inclined to listen to his people.”

Toussaint & Lenin: The Haitian & Russian Revolutions (ChickenBones, 8 December 2008)
“What should Toussaint have done? A hundred and fifty years of history and the scientific study of revolution begun by Marx and Engels, and amplified by Lenin and Trotsky, justify us in pointing to an alternative course.”

Toussaint L’Ouverture and the Haitian Revolution (Workers Power, Issue 284, March 2004)
“In November 1803, Haiti was declared an independent republic, the world’s oldest black republic and the second-oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere, after the United States.”